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A growing number of local governments are using ballot referendums to raise real estate or other business taxes, often to fund progressive goals such as building supportive housing for homeless people. Voters in San Francisco; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Silicon Valley’s Mountain View recently backed various tax hikes to fund homeless services, or to develop affordable housing. And Evanston recently decided to use its transfer taxes to fund a reparations program for Black residents.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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WSJ already reports many multi-million dollar homes in LA are now marketed as “for rent”, rather than “for sale”, specifically because of this newly-enacted mansion tax, absolutely intended to avoid or restructure anticipated tax burden due to a sale. The number of closed LA mansion sales has dramatically dropped; LA mansion-owners actively seek alternate disposition approaches, including creating new ultra-luxury rental-properties from their “mansion” homes. Rich people have the ability to create the creative “workaround” for many wealth-tax situations. Chicago is a perpetual “johny-come-lately”, belatedly adopting progressive policies already proven to be failed implementations elsewhere in its role-model “woke” paradigm… Read more »
SHOCKER!!, major Chicago news outlet actually compares Chicago progressive crazy legislation to what has happen with similar legislation in other libtard cities!!